Hi Ryh,
over here or should I say here down under, the traditional cooked potato traders cook their potatoes simply on racks in a gas fired oven, usually over sized commercial ovens but displayed characteristically with olde fashioned rustic appearance.
If you start to foil them, then that will add a lot of extra time, cost and burnt hands removing them. The skins would also be soft rather than crispier when left bare.
They are cooked until a knife can be penetrated through the potato and hence is broken apart and then the garlic butter, the diced ham, slices cabbage, mayonaise and sour cream are dolloped on and yum, a quick easy meal.
My wife occasionally does them but in the microwave.
Why not cook a couple in foil as well and try them to find out what you prefer in future.

OK Rhy,
now that I deem you and Wlodek as the baked potato gurus, can you give us all awaiting baked potato chefs, some indication of temps and approx time lines as they don't always indicate their degree of 'cookedness' by the colour of their salted/oiled jacket colour.
I always prod a skewer through their skin (alright then, their jacket) to check how soft their innerds are and whether they are ready to break apart, dress and droulle upon.
I know it depends on the size, thickness and oven temperature!

As a newly appointed BPG (Baked Potato Guru that is) I can confirm that your list of the sources of variation is correct, I would add position in the oven to it. Yes, I do prod them as well. And I put the tray very close to the embers or fire, trying to remember to turn it round every so often.

If you put them in fresh from the fridge it will be no less than an hour. If you parboil them or give them a 10min blast in the microwave - it is close to an hour, but can be less.

There is hardly a "too hot" oven for them. Back in Poland we used to make a campfire in the field, bury the freshly dug potatoes in the hot ashes and embers, wait an hour or so (as far as I can remember) making a small fire on top, dig them out with a stick, peel the charred skin off ... The flavour was unforgettable, the ones I made yesterday were not far off ...

Hi Wlodek,
this is exactly what friends of mine do when we are way outback on 4wd tours to remote areas of Australia,
They foil wrap the spuds and put them in the coals but I am more interested in the pot roasts.
The spuds are then used with the roast (usually a large leg of mutton (as lamb has little or no flavor) and usually there is not enough room in my large Bedourie for all the roast eeg an spuds.

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